Time
by Shadow Padawan
Summary: The changes happened so fluidly and naturally that Astoria has not had the chance to stop and consider them, but now with the war and time virtually frozen in the anticipation of an outcome, perhaps she can indulge her desires regardless. Femslash.


Years go by too quickly in school, Astoria notices.

Childhood drains away like a sunny dream and never comes back, only dwindles away in memory, shrinking and shriveling until it is too hard to recall all the details. A girl can easily find herself holding her first wand at seven and then buying her first adult wand at eleven before her first year of Hogwarts in what seems to be an interval of only a few months instead of years. Some days can never come soon enough – Christmas and birthdays, trips to the summer house in Southern France, spring galas with all of Mother's friends in their pretty dresses. But then a girl looks back and realizes that all the time has disappeared into some great unknown void and the shreds of it float around in her head, memories like strips of white silk blown around in the wind, the scraps of a gown as the only thing left of it.

School is much the same in many ways. She lives from weekend to weekend from holiday to holiday, not noticing that the time in between is just as valuable and it is always the anticipation that is important.

Those first years are still a blur between childhood and adolescence, drowned in some sort of delusional happiness when a girl can bounce around like a small sun bunny. The grass gives off the sweetest smell in the springtime and all the girls cannot wait to finish their studying for class to go out on the first Saturday of May and stretch out under the sun with the sound of the lake gurgling in their ears. Thy talk of girlish things, silly things, like dresses and ice cream and toys. If the conversation ever turns to boys the entire group dissolves into giggles, not because they know or care much for boys at this age, but because the unknown is always scary and elicits excitement and trepidation, prompting gossip and talk and anxious laughter.

Being a teenager is different. It's almost like the little girl that was suddenly develops a different understanding of time and how fast it goes. Her own body has suddenly changed and so has that of her friends and classmates and there are new players and instincts in this game. There are norms and responsibilities that suddenly come to light and all of those pretty parties with Mother's friends are suddenly more an obligation than an enjoyment. Time suddenly seems to rush instead of languish in the sun or sink into the snow. Not that Astoria gets much of a chance to contemplate this, to understand the slow dying of her carefree childhood and mourn its passing, mourn the passing of her girlhood friends into womanhood where they will all inevitably be something and someone else, for that is life's necessity. She sees that for some of the other girls it is not quite that time yet, but they are not Purebloods and their obligations might only crash on them at graduation, instead of creeping in and slowly eclipsing the metaphoric sun.

But of course, Astoria never gets a proper chance to slide from one consciousness to the next. None of them do. The War that starts when she is fifteen lingers in the background for a short while and then explodes into reality, shattering time and making it go still. There is no time in war because there is no set future and whatever they are all hurdling toward is so faint that it is impossible to measure reality up against it.

And in this stopped time, with no possibility to calculate consequence – for those are always matters of the future – anything seems possible.

* * *

Hestia was a girl in Astoria's year, a dormmate and classmate. They were in the same group of giggling carefree children who kicked up autumn leaves, taught each other simple spells for creating snowflakes, rolled around in the spring grass and pen-paled over the summer while Astoria was in France with her family.

Hestia was quiet and dreamy, her girlish frame always slight and fragile like she barely belonged in the world where she walked. This seemed to be even more apparent when their bodies began to change. Astoria was very proud of her wide hips and developing breasts. She was not sure why, at first, except that her mother said it was good when a woman had wide hips, but she soon began to notice just how hard it was not to watch the other girls and note their hips and breasts and waists.

Hestia stayed flat, her body undeveloped and unadulterated by adolescence for so long that Astoria saw no shame when they hugged or sat in each other's lap or innocently shared a bed. While her entire body burned – quite inappropriately, as she soon realized – at the sight of other girl's bodies – so much so that she feared that touching them even on the arm might give her away – she felt little such embarrassment with Hestia. Their friendship was warm and boundless.

It was only at the end of their fourth year when Hestia began to develop the breasts and the hips that drove Astoria up a wall. She suddenly began to wonder at herself, clutch at those white fabric strips in the breeze, those memories, in a search for what had she missed in herself all along. None of the other girls seemed to pay any mind to the development of all these new features, other than how they related to men and the future. She found out that wide hips were good for child-bearing and that boys – men – like small waists and large breasts. Astoria never cared much for what men liked, although she supposed she should. What she did wonder was what Hestia thought, if she had ever seen Astoria blush when they disrobed for a swim, if she felt the same things.

Perhaps, had Astoria ever had a Coming Out, she would have been forced to confront these things more as her parents would begin the search for her match. But then the War came and time stopped. Then everything was measured in the time frame of a single day and Astoria felt no reason to try and solve a riddle that was unsolvable in the space of a single day.

* * *

Hestia was fairly good at potions. She was better at History of Magic but the new Headmaster and her Aunt and Uncle – Alecto and Amycus weren't exactly that closely related to her but Hestia referred to them as such – valued the more practical talents of students. So Hestia tried to please, brewing potions and cutting up and packing ingredients in her spare time. She did not seem to mind as long as she could stay on her family's good side.

Astoria found her in the dungeons one evening doing the brewing. She leaned against the door and watched for some time. "Do you want some help?"

Hestia only shrugged. "No, Ree, I'm fine. I do it because I can; they don't force me." She looked up and met Astoria's eyes. "Your hair looks better in the sun than in this light."

Astoria thought that Hestia had to be right. Her blonde hair must look much better in the sun or in soft candlelight than in the harsh glare of the charmed dungeon work lights. "I turned sixteen in February," Astoria mused after a long time. "I suppose I should have had a Coming Out ball but everyone is too busy with the war." She wrung her hands, wondering if her parents would even think to mention it. It was April and no word had been spoken.

Hestia stirred the pot and hummed. She let the stirrer drop and moved toward Astoria, her hands smoothing down the folds of fabric on her skirt. "I should have Come Out too; I was sixteen in November." She stopped in front of Astoria, watching her. Hestia took the clip out of her hair and let her brown strands float over her face. "Does it seem like that was a long time ago or a short one?"

Astoria shrugged. "I can't tell anymore. No one seems to care about anything anymore, except for the War and what is happening in the current moment. November… November… Sometimes it seems like it was yesterday, sometimes like a million years ago and sometimes…like such a month does not exist."

Hestia laughed and reached out a hand to run it through Astoria's hair. "Have you ever thought of the future?"

"I've tried. It doesn't work too well. Why?"

Hestia shrugged. "I just wonder, if everything could change, if we are in a timeless warp here, just waiting for this War to end so we can move on with our lives, does that mean we may say and do things that we would never do before or after?"

"I don't know." Astoria felt mesmerized. The hand in her hair felt familiar, she had felt it before in all those scraps of memories, in all those golden days when it did not mean anything but friendship and comfort. "Do you think that's how it is?"

Hestia did not answer. She leaned forward and kissed Astoria ever so gently. The kiss elicited strange, euphoric memories. All the time that had gone by came crashing down on her, the nostalgia of her summer of a childhood flooding her mind and her heart. This seemed like a blessing from those days and the curse for the future. It went against everything she was told but coincided with everything she knew within herself.

But there was no time here and it had stopped before Astoria had a proper chance to grow up, to have the sun drained away. So she could, perhaps, skirt all those doubts for some time more, enjoy this – these kisses and touches – until time started again. And Merlin only knew when that would be.


End file.
